State of the art in Emacs outlining?

["Tom Davey" <tdavey@sputnik.com>]

Is there a preferred elisp package (or combination) in use today for
Emacs outlining? I am a little confused by the several packages out
there -- outline.el, of course, and allout.el and folding.el and others
less known that promise improvements to outline.el -- and I thought I'd
ask about them before jumping in to learn one. 

I'm mainly interesting in ordinary document production rather than
outlining for source code files, but all thoughts are gratefully
welcomed. 

Kai, I read through the thread on emacs-devel called "ill-advised
changes [was key bindings in hideshow.el]" (Feb. 2001), which discusses
outline major-mode and the desirability of an "always-on" structual
overview utility and which includes posts between yourself and RMS, but
this newbie is still a bit confused. :-)

Thanks,
Tom Davey

-- 
Tom Davey
tom@tomdavey.com
blog: http://www.monstersfromtheid.com/